Hello everyone! I just joined this site! From reading some of the forum posts, it seems that many of you are very high-level film makers. I only have about 2 years of expirence.

I love making movies. I want to make a feture length film at my college as one of my final projects a couple years down the road. I got a question for all of you experts...

I recently (well, about 4 months ago) got a Panasonic AG-DVC7 digital prosumer video camera. Its the best camera I could afford. I know that digital video can ony go so far. Anyway, do any of you know how to get a really convincing film look with a DV video camera? How do I edit/adjust my way to a film look? I have read some things (turn up saturation and contrast etc.) but I want to hear what you all have to say. I know how to use Adobe Premiere very well, and I'm comfortable with Final Cut Pro.

Any help would be vauled. By the way, I am also on YouTube under the screen name RobertDV.

Hello everyone! I just joined this site! From reading some of the forum posts, it seems that many of you are very high-level film makers. I only have about 2 years of expirence.

I love making movies. I want to make a feture length film at my college as one of my final projects a couple years down the road. I got a question for all of you experts...

I recently (well, about 4 months ago) got a Panasonic AG-DVC7 digital prosumer video camera. Its the best camera I could afford. I know that digital video can ony go so far. Anyway, do any of you know how to get a really convincing film look with a DV video camera? How do I edit/adjust my way to a film look? I have read some things (turn up saturation and contrast etc.) but I want to hear what you all have to say. I know how to use Adobe Premiere very well, and I'm comfortable with Final Cut Pro.

Any help would be vauled. By the way, I am also on YouTube under the screen name RobertDV.

Thanks,Rob

Well the best way I know to get a convincing "film-look" out of a DV camera is to use the DVX because of 24p. To be honest I don't think you should worry too much about getting a film look out of your camera and just learn to utilize it's limitations and work within them. Things you should concentrate on: how to write stories and turn them into scripts, learn how to light, and finding people who share your passion of filmmaking and join up with them.

Well the best way I know to get a convincing "film-look" out of a DV camera is to use the DVX because of 24p. To be honest I don't think you should worry too much about getting a film look out of your camera and just learn to utilize it's limitations and work within them. Things you should concentrate on: how to write stories and turn them into scripts, learn how to light, and finding people who share your passion of filmmaking and join up with them.

Usually saturation and contrast are too high on a camera, I would not turn them up, but rather turn them down.

If your a new filmmaker, I think the most convincing film 'look' would be to focus on the lighting, composition and camera work. Color and contrast, gama, etc, all those are things that can help make the video look better, but if you don't start with a frame that is well lit and timely to the story, no amount of color correction can make it look like film.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Usually the biggest thing glaring at me from anything shot on video is that's it's shot LIKE video. If you take the time to light, block, and move the camera as if you were shooting with a film camera, it will be much more convincing and look much more professional.

Do any of you have specific advice about lighting? I've read a few things like that when I film someone's face should try to have the bones and shapes of their face cause shadows; I sould not really just light up the entire face.

I guess just pointing light sources at very specific angles and things like that?

Do any of you have specific advice about lighting? I've read a few things like that when I film someone's face should try to have the bones and shapes of their face cause shadows; I sould not really just light up the entire face.

I guess just pointing light sources at very specific angles and things like that?

Well it all depends on the story being told but you also really don't want your subject's face to look flat(unless you are going for that). I recommend reading Painting With Light by John Alton, it's a great read, a little dated but still it's great. Really learn how to light above all else because that will help you in making your videos look much better, remember to practice practice practice.

natuarly it depends on your subject matter but in general you will discover more appealing results from low end video technology when you under light it. that is as apposed to over lighting it.

ie: if you have a character who is sitting in his bedroom at night and he has just heard some of the most horrible news he has ever heard about something or other (can you tell i'm not a writer?). You should experiment with lighting him with a single very controlled light source that comes from behind him so that it just reaches around his face enough so that you can see the side of his face. then have the smallest light in the world over camera that only hits his eyes. then take one more light and just create a small pattern on the background behind his head. make sure the walls are painted something on the deeper side of things. (never white). make sure his wardrobe corresponds with the color palette choice of the BG. and make sure that the props furniture etc are well thought out to add and not distract from the emotional moment you are trying to create.

i can not emphasize enough how important production design is to achieving any and all looks desired.
a great production design makes the dp's job much more straight forward.

once you've put in all that thought and done all that work then you can run your video through some software and add scratches to it or whatever. but you might not want to anymore...

About the 24p mode i have a confusion, even if we shoot it on 24p in the end all out players and recorders are 50i or 25p for Pal so when we capture the footage and take the final dump its going to be 50i also won't 24p be a problem shooting sync sound.

Yes, you should shoot 25P if you are doing a 50i post and video release. There's no reason to deal with 24P.

You can deal with 24P in a PAL environment, but it just makes dealing with the sound harder, plus if you're talking about a standard def video camera, you have the fact that 24P/480 has less lines than 25P/560. You'd probably shoot with the sound synced to the 24 fps rate, but in a PAL post have to speed it up slightly to 25 fps, along with the image.

Yes, you should shoot 25P if you are doing a 50i post and video release. There's no reason to deal with 24P.

You can deal with 24P in a PAL environment, but it just makes dealing with the sound harder, plus if you're talking about a standard def video camera, you have the fact that 24P/480 has less lines than 25P/560. You'd probably shoot with the sound synced to the 24 fps rate, but in a PAL post have to speed it up slightly to 25 fps, along with the image.

But i'm still confused why do we shoot 24p then.

If i shoot 24p how do i go about post production, are there editing softwares which support 24p? and if yes which one's?

Since PAL runs at 25 fps (50i) even movies shot at 24 fps get transferred at 25 fps for PAL, so you might as well shoot at 25P for PAL.

Plus the DVX100 records either NTSC or PAL, not 24P or 25P -- it adds a pulldown to 24P to convert to 60i and for PAL is merely splits the frames into fields to convert 25 to 50.

So if you are in a PAL country, it will not only be easier but look better if you shoot 25P on a PAL DVX100 rather than 24P on an NTSC DVX100. Otherwise you'll have conversion issues trying to look at the material since digital NTSC is 720 x 480 pixels and PAL is 720 x 560 pixels, so the pixels are not the same shape, plus of course the frame rate difference.

No, there isn't much visual difference between 24 fps and 25 fps.

Worldwide film projection for sound movies is 24 fps. But even if you shot at 25 fps or 25P, you could show it at 24 fps on film and just adjust the audio speed and pitch to compensate.